Iron Fashion and Travel Accessories Design · 2022
Shapes of Light Decorative Scarf
by Xiaoxi Zhang
- A' Design Award 2022 Iron Winner in Fashion and Travel Accessories Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Johnstons of Elgin
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 21,596
- Verification code D83176C5D3 · Verify this award
About Shapes of Light Decorative Scarf
Shapes of Light is a series of woven cashmere scarves. The series includes three designs inspired by natural and urban scenes: the sunrise on the sea, building lights in the city at night, and soft moonlight in the evening. Illustration concepts were translated into geometric and minimal woven patterns to suit the requirements of weaving. Each scarf is dyed and woven in a Scottish mill, and the surface is raised with traditional hand-worked teasels for a soft finish. The aim is to turn a daily accessory into a wearable art piece.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- "Shapes of Light" is Nancy Zhang's special collaboration design series with the Scottish cashmere expert brand Johnstons of Elgins.
For the first time, Nancy expressed her illustration arts with textile technology. The theme of this collaboration "The shape of light" is an extension of her personal illustration project "Light seeker". She made 3 designs to express diverse forms of light: The sunrise on the sea, building lights in the city at night and the soft moonlight in the evening. Light shapes how the environment looks to us, yet the environment we constructed reshapes light in turn at the same time. Does light shape our appearance, or do we construct what light looks like?
It is not only a fashion design collaboration, but also an artistic endeavour. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Sunrise and Moonlight: Length 190mm x Width 35mm
Building light: Length 180mm x Width 25cm - Tags
- Light, textile, geometric, cashmere, woven, gradient, artistic, scarf, abstract
- Production Technology
- Woven cashmere scarf series. The whole transforming process was like purification of the visual expressions. From dyeing to blending, carding to spinning, warping to weaving, knitting to teaselling and cutting to folding-it all happens in Johnstons of Elgins.
2 Ombres(Sunrise and Moonlight)：
Manufactured in Johsntons of Elgin, the craft design department and dye house worked together to create a unique blend of colours for the Ombre Oversized Classic Scarves. With the advanced jacquard machine, we can weave over 10 colours in one scarf and each colour is dyed in Elgin mill. From fiber to final products, on average of 33 craftspeople contribute to the making of each of our cashmere scarves. The signature ripple finish is achieved by using traditional hand-worked teasels to gently raise the surface or 'nap' of the completed accessory, achieving a beautifully soft handle.
Building light：
Manufactured in Johsntons of Elgin, the craft design department and dye house worked together to create a unique blend of colours for the Ombre Oversized Classic Scarves. On average of 33 craftspeople contribute to the making of each of our cashmere scarves. The mill uses use dobby loom to weave this particular cashmere scarf, and each colour is dyed in Elgin mill. The signature ripple finish is achieved by using traditional hand-worked teasels to gently raise the surface or 'nap' of the completed accessory, achieving a beautifully soft handle. - Design Challenge
- As an illustrator and visual artist, the biggest challenge of this textile design collaboration was transforming the illustrations into woven textile patterns without losing the original conceptual expressions.
Considering the limitations of woven technology, we had to minimize the genomic shapes for the designs as much as possible. However, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable and meaningful challenge for us both. The whole transforming process was like purification of my visual expressions, which is the charm of the textile design. - Project Duration
- This project designs started in February 2021 in Berlin, Germany and the products finished in September 2021 in Elgin, Scotland. Currently the goods are available in Shanghai, China.
- Operation Flow
- Scarves are one of the most common accessories to keep us warm during the winter type. Yet these kinds of daily, simple accessories could be "tangible", "wearable" art pieces as well. Based on "Movable Gallery on body" this key idea, the abstract drawings about different shapes of light were created, however, afterwards the graphics were slightly modified regarding to the woven technology requirements.Actually the final result turned out more minimal than before and it also gave people more space for imagining.Special thanks to the reliable collaboration team, it took more than 30 manufacturing steps and 33 craftspeople's involved in total to achieve the final results and everything went smoothly.
- Research
- In my opinion, this design series is not just a commercial collaboration but my attempt to seek a new form of project creation, transforming my personal project into a tangible painting. As the oldest form of humanistic art, textiles have always been very mature in the transformation of technology and contents. Product design is a way for us to touch and use literary and artistic creations in modern society. I call this collaboration series "The Shape of Light” as an extension of the theme of my personal painting project "Light Seekers". And all my research from my personal experiences in nature went into this: during traveling the seaside in the Izu Peninsula, a building lights view in Shanghai and the clear summer moonlight in Berlin. These physic phenomenon were turned into graphical ideas in my mind while I was looking at them. In other words, I would have painted them anyway with or without this design collaboration. It was a pleasure to work with the Johnstons of Elgin team, JOE is a cashmere textile expert in the industry. During the cooperation, I was able to entrust the technical realisation and manufacturing part to professionals. That was the ideal teamwork experience.
- Inspiration
- Design 1 Sunrise-The inspiration of this one comes from the natural phenomenon- the sunrise on the sea, visualised the graphics with stripes and gradient colours.
Design 2 Building Light-The inspiration comes from the city night view-warm building lights from people's perspective outside, design with plaid graphic.
Design 3 Moonlight- The inspiration was also from he natural phenomenon-soft moonlight in summer evening without clouds,
design with gradient colours. - Image Credits
- Design&Illustration by Xiaoxi (Nancy) Zhang
Photography by Teasels(Shanghai) Trading Company Limited - Patents
- Johnstons of Elgin (2021) Jenny Urquhart
Colors of Shapes of Light Decorative Scarf
Design Interview about Shapes of Light Decorative Scarf
This collaboration series “ Shapes of light” was an extension of my personal art project “Lightseeker”. The inspirations came from the natural phenomenons that I came across in daily life: it could be the sunrise on the beach; building lights in evening, gentle moonlight in summertime.
How to represent the light scenes with minimal geometric shapes and colors. It was quite challenging because the textile weaving techniques were quite different from drawing & painting. I treated these designs as abstract drawings, people could feel the warmth of light through the colors.
Continue making a new project/series. There are many new ideas come out from my mind recently.
The concept ideas comes out like thunderstorms usually, however filling the concept completely takes longer time.
As I said it was my personal art project extension, I discussed with my clients and they trusted me very much, approved this concept smoothly.
This was a crossover collaboration series between the company and artist. I am glad that my clients have such a professional, well experienced technique supports and make the actual product design ( especially dyeing colors) perfectly.
There’s a lot of personal drawing style attached to it.
I guess my aesthetics has been influenced by Bauhaus designs a lot all these years.
The people who likes artistic, quality and sustainable design products.
Patterns, color palette and fabric’s quality.
Because these series represented several different forms of lights in my memory so I called it “Shapes of lights”. I believe “lights” could also shape us.
Photoshop just like other designs did.
Nothing is truly original and unique nowadays but I think this series has a lot of emotional memories attached to it, I hope it could also wake up people’s memories who wear these designs.
Luckily I collaborated with such a professional design team in JOE’s company. There were around 33 craft experts I worked with transferred my drawings to the actual product, also I appreciate a lot other departments and agency’s hard works. It was a perfect teamwork.
The actual design is a story, concepts were my vocabulary and technology were grammars, it help the whole storytelling clear and smooth.
It was an emotional, personal design journey. Usually my works won’t rely on the big datas unless I plan to do some other type of projects in future.
It was quite challenging at the beginning because I was lack of the textile technique knowledges. So I had to minimize the original details a lot. But it was a good experience because it made me realized what was “ less is more” properly.
I was quite happy about my first design series result so I tried to submit it to an international design stage without thought too much.
Firstly I learnt a lot of textile techniques knowledges that’s the most obvious. Secondly my design experiences helped my drawing style improved also, thirdly this collaboration it enriched my memories.
I think it’s all I want to say. Thank you for the questions, and I hope my new design works would meet everyone soon.